BEST DOCUMENTARYA WALNUT TREE, by Ammar Aziz
Brilliant cinematographic approach. The author manages to get in tune with the history of the characters, refugees from one of the most remote areas of the world on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan . The tree metaphor is well suited to the figure of the grandfather who decides to return to his land abandoning children and grandchildren to rejoin his roots despite the risk of becoming a Taliban target. The Character himself explores the theme of travel on several dimensions and levels. Grandpa himself is already a journey through time; the tragedy of the character who wants to go back to his homeland and to stop running away, who wants to escape the horrors, that still wants to have a choice. This work represents both categories that the Festival Sole Luna has chosen for this edition: Travel and Human Rights.

SPECIAL MENTION FOR THE BEST DIRECTIONTHE BRIDE OF THE NILE, by Edouard Mills Affif
For the invisibility of the director and the unexpected fictional structure he gets in the documentary. The filmmaker perfectly summarizes the resignation of the different members of the Egyptian family who have to renounce happiness.

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SPECIAL MENTION FOR THE BEST PHOTOGRAPHYTIDES, by Alessandro Negrini
For the ability to describe a nearly decade-long conflict between two irreconcilable factions in a city within Europe. The extraordinarily sensitive text and photography add charm to the film.

VITA ACTIVA – THE SPIRIT OF HANNAH ARENDT, by Ada Ushpiz
For the ability to mix archive material, interviews , and the masterful use of letters between Hannah Arendt and Heidegger . The “banality of evil” that Hannah Arendt stressed following the Eichmann process is unfortunately always ready to reappear.

SPECIAL MENTION FOR THE MOST INNOVATIVE DOCUMENTARY#MYESCAPE, by Elke Sasse
For the originality of the new way of producing the documentary, through social networks , YouTube and the current communication tools . The migrants are the focus of a self-narration. The work of assembling all these contributions produces a story that shows “the invisible otherwise impossible”.

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“A BRIDGE BETWEEN CULTURES” AWARD ASSIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION SOLE LUNA – UN PONTE TRA LE CULTURE#MYESCAPE, by Elke Sasse
A film which is capable of representing entirely the 2016 edition. The journey of the migrants faces the thematic of human rights defense in any kind of expression. The migrants are protagonists and filmmakers at the same time and they tell their story while they are experiencing it, posting hashtags in the web which represent a desperate call for help. Scientifically speaking the film is a deep and courageous anthropological and at the same time journalistic research. From the artistic point of view, the direction is refined and intimate, the editing is sapient and effective.
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SPECIAL JURY AWARD
The Jury members of Liceo Scientifico Albert Einstein, Liceo Linguistico Ninni Cassarà of Palermo and of Københavns åbne Gymnasium of Copenhagen award EN TRÁNSITO, by Oskar Tejedor as the best documentary of the Sole Luna 2016 XI Edition, for the Human rights section, with the following motivations:

• For describing the global social inequality through the touching story of young mothers living in Latin America, who are forced to separate from their family and their children in order to guarantee their future lives.
• For the Director’s incisive and sensitive ability to analyse each mother’s mind and to highlight the inner conflictual sentimental world, caused by their daily lives that they spend far from their families.
• For narrating, from the various protagonists’ points of view, the dramatic experience of the collapse of the family unity.
• For showing the strength, the courage and the resolution, and the self-sacrifice of the female main characters who are able to make caring and difficult choices for their children, choices that could be considered unintelligible or heroic by Western people like we all are.
• For depicting migration with a human face, highlighting the personal reasons, the social causes and the emotional side effects that many inhabitants of the wealthiest countries cannot even realize.
• For making us understand, how the right to work, the right to social services and the right to an adequate health and well-being of her/his own family, (23 and 24 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) , have to be considered fundamental for a balanced development and for the happiness of each human being.

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The jury of students awards a special mention to Ada Ushpiz for her impressive documentary VITA ACTIVA – THE SPIRIT OF HANNAH ARENDT, with the following motivations:

• For the plain, rigorous and careful reenactment of Hannah Arendt’s intellectual biography
• For the intensity of the stock shots showed in the documentary, as a result of a precise and long-lasting archival research
• For the evocative strength of each shots about the Shoah, which waken us from our moral numbness and help us to take our responsibility for every merciless action which happens everyday around us.
• To have forced to not give up reflecting on the problem of politics and moral evil.
• To have reminded every spectator we cannot tolerate or accept any violations of the right to life, liberty, equality and security of person’s life, articles 1, 2, 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, since they have to be seen as the pillars of whatever society that claims to be “Human”.